Why MS Teams Is Killing Your Job Stacking Game
Before we begin, I know we all hate MS Teams.
In fact, I spent a lot of time trying to find a fancy way of putting “Or How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate MS Teams” in the title before I realized that the last part would be redundant. Teams has effectively ruined the mental state of almost every remote employee in America. You don’t need me to remind you how the horrible call/notification sound makes your blood boil.
But I do want to raise another grievance against Teams. In this case, I want you to focus on how teams basically exposes you to unnecessary risks, and how technological glitches may happen when you least expect them.
Last week or so, I was on a 1-on-1 call with my new J6 manager, which unfortunately overlapped with my J1 daily standup. I was listening to both, keeping my J1 tab muted.
All part of the usual set up one must do, and part of the usual training we give to the members of the JS community.
Suddenly, my J6 manager stopped talking.
He had just heard my J1 boss doing his standup introduction loud and clear through my feed.
So what did I do in that moment? Did I panic and freeze? Well no, you cannot afford to do that. I immediately disconnected myself from the J1 call and played it off naturally.
“No, I didn’t hear anything weird”. However, I did not stop there. Something was amiss.
So I played a Youtube video in the background, testing the waters. My J6 manager heard that too.
So there it was, I had found the culprit.
My Logitech microphone was leaking my system's internal desktop audio directly into the MS Teams call.
This is a known, massive vulnerability:
If you are using certain headsets, analog audio splitters, or default motherboard audio drivers, the electrical grounding is often shared between the output (your headphones) and the input (your mic). This causes an audio "bleed," where whatever your computer is playing gets pumped directly into your microphone feed, even if you are wearing closed-back headphones and your speakers are off.
Evidently, MS Teams, which is already known for being the clunkiest, worst piece of enterprise messaging software in existence, did absolutely nothing to gate or suppress the leaked system audio.
Now obviously nothing major happened. I instantly switched my MS Teams input source to my external camera microphone, completely isolating the audio path, and the leak stopped.
But the margin of error was razor-thin. People can easily lose their jobs over something as simple as a crossed wire.
This specific case doesn’t necessarily apply to you. But it does illustrate one of the many pitfalls we need to be on the lookout for. Part of the Job Stacking skillset is not just being able to land multiple roles, but being able to effectively maneuver around multiple responsibilities. These responsibilities in turn demand that you be able to think on the fly and handle technological mishaps accordingly.
I teach people how to identify these situations beforehand, because obviously people aren’t used to working in this manner. We are adapting a new set of rules and skills into our everyday schedule precisely because the old one didn’t work. If having one job was enough, then yes, most people wouldn’t be tempted by a second job.
But reality paints a different picture, doesn’t it? This is why learning these skills is vital.
If you want to learn about a more in-depth approach to stacking jobs correctly, hit me up. You can answer this email or schedule a call via the button below.
Until next time,
Rolf.
